It’s March 2019! Among many other things, this time of the year we celebrate the empowerment, heroism and contribution of women in society.

March 8 marks International Women’s Day and the entire month is dedicated as Women’s Month in our country.

As we celebrate this occasion, DA-PRDP features valuable contribution, inspiring stories, aspirations and dreams of women who are part of our Project implementation. Highlighting the theme “We Make Change Work for Women” we put the spotlight on the catalytic role of women in rural development.

Meet two of the empowered women from Mindanao.

Engr. Maria Fe Papelera Gabunales, Rural Infrastructure Specialist of DA-PRDP in Mindanao, and Mercia Salarda Alli, Supervising Agriculturist from the Province of Sulu, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Engr. Maria Fe, (Bing to her friends) has been involved in rural development work since 2000. She said being an engineer puts you in a better position where we can be of service to others. She feels fulfilled and inspired to do more seeing how the people or project beneficiaries are happy and grateful with the completed projects she is involved in.  While, Mercia is part of the BARMM team who undertook the value-chain analysis for Mangosteen in the Province of Sulu.

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